


Golden

by JPlash



Series: Never Regrets 'verse [1]
Category: X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canon Backstory, Domestic Violence, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-27
Updated: 2011-10-18
Packaged: 2017-10-24 02:25:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/257865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JPlash/pseuds/JPlash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik had known Charles almost five days when they set out across the country together.  They’d been on the road a week when Charles asked if he was attracted to men, already knowing the answer.  It had been a week and a half on the road, ten days, when they’d started playing chess, an ugly plastic set Charles had bought in a store in a one store town.</p><p>It was more days than Erik was still counting when his senses stumbled over a glowing metal anomaly out near the walls of the Westchester estate; more days than it should have taken to realise that he was not the only one with long-buried secrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Reference to alcoholism and domestic abuse, both emotional and physical. No graphic depictions of violence, but recollections of violence against children.
> 
> Written for a plot-based prompt on...one of the kinkmemes? Thanks to OP and readers of the original post :)
> 
> Rated M for references to sex and violence.

The Xavier estate at Westchester could be, Erik had found, intolerable or endearingly convenient, infuriating or unnervingly soothing or almost anything in between, depending on the weather and the company and his own sense of the day. This afternoon was blustery, chill and dim, autumn whispering in, sky like newspaper print, and Erik was enjoying it enough to remain outside, far from the house. The trees were loud, whispering less than making a raucous panic of the dying day, and walking away from the manor it looked as though the grass might roll on until the world dissipated to sky.

It felt good to stand in the face of that, to not dissolve and to not move; to walk through it like stone parting water, like metal deep in the earth. There was a base, instinctive satisfaction in defying the wind and the chill, and there was always something to the pleasantly numbing cold of such an evening.

It was not an indulgence of which Erik was proud, but it had been a good day. He’d raised a gun without touch, fired it without finger on trigger, and stopped the bullet before it could pierce his skull. He was ready now, he thought, to have Charles do it—to make sure he was ready to stop bullets that he hadn’t fired himself, that he didn’t know were coming, or at least precisely when. He’d ask him again tomorrow, make the request serious this time; put a gun in his hand rather than just mentioning it, and assure him that there was no risk. Charles had his sensibilities but he had been determined so far in working to make their abilities stronger, and Erik didn’t think he would refuse him outright.

It was in this state of mind, in this casual strolling through the wind, awareness spreading out into the soil and the horizon, that his senses stumbled over an anomaly—a purity, a red hot point in a sea of green. There was a fundamental difference of experience, for Erik, between walking in a city and in more rural surrounds, between strolling around the house and strolling far from it. The proximity of metal was a thing constantly experienced—it was everywhere within his grasp or it was distant, it was over his head and under his feet or it was a void, the quietest echo deep within the earth and the steadying, solid weight of the manor off behind him. Here, at the furthest edge of the estate, where the sweet-bay and flowering dogwood that ringed the house gave way entirely to oak and cherry and scattered aspen, far enough that no human voice would carry and the lower levels of the house were invisible behind the trees, metal was defined in narrow points—the coin in his pocket; the watch on his wrist; the house behind him, a point narrowed by distance. It was a grid that framed all of his perceptions, a primary level of awareness that superseded sight.

So it was immediate and magnetic, forcefully drawing his attention, when the lazy scan of his senses found a fourth point not far away, and not a scrap of alloy wire or a mix with plastics or a mix with stone but a tangible mass of something pure, a single element, a clear, clean note of flawless metal like a tiny light flashing in the distance.

He couldn’t tell what it was—he’d experimented passingly with that skill but had made little progress—but he knew it was undiluted. He could almost, almost feel the shape of it. It was buried, he thought, though it was hard to distinguish between earth and air; it could just have been the distance. If he focused hard, though, he thought he could feel the faint shiver that was the tiny metallic elements of the soil; not enough to shift, nothing to grab onto, but a buzz of awareness, like the shivers of telepathy that escaped Charles when he was sleeping or post-coital.

He walked toward it because it was there more than anything, off in the direction of the far corner where he knew that hedge apples grew ( _Charles breathing in deeply and murmuring something about the smell of summer, childhood afternoons and the way the hedge trees, overrun with fruit, made the air like oranges almost until winter_ ), and the conscious decision not to dwell on that, that he knew where to find hedge apples or anything else in Charles's sprawling garden.

Erik had only been scanning his surroundings idly, unconscious, the automatic way he did everywhere, always, and the thing that he had stumbled upon was not far. It was closer, clearer as he walked, hot like a buried coal; definitely buried, or at least covered up, definitely small. Unlikely to be a coin, he thought; it didn’t feel like an alloy. A piece of jewellery, perhaps. If there was anywhere in the world that pieces of jewellery lay discarded in the grass and the trees, it was probably here.

He walked toward a slightly denser scattering of trees, red oak, white oak, black cherry and it was closer; Charles had named all the trees for him, a long, winding stroll on a long, mild afternoon that Erik was sure should have been intolerable. How many days ago had that been?

A minute’s brisk stroll and it was very close, until an odd bunching of trees confronted him, seeds grown too close to their forebear and left untamed, perhaps. It was a tiny thicket of plum trees, flowers tucked away until the spring. He had been here before, Erik realised, unless there were two such clumps of trees. Charles had told him they turned white in the springtime, clouds of white that fell away in the rain. They were shading golden now, the last clinging remnants of green ready to fade and die.

The thing, the thing of metal was in there, Erik was sure. He hadn’t noticed it last time he was out here, but there had been more metal around then, all the adornments and shrapnel that Charles carried with him, and he had been distracted; Charles had talked and talked and talked that afternoon, which wasn’t unusual, but it had been a good day, a calm day, almost hazy in Erik’s memory, disturbing, somewhat, in hindsight.

Regardless, something was certainly here now. Could something have been planted? It would be a meaningless place to bug, or to set cameras, or to rig explosives. More likely one of the boys had left something. Or Charles, perhaps? Erik slipped sideways between the trees, into the space where they hadn’t crossed the last time, close between the branches.

Inside was a tiny ring of space, a circle of grass buried in fallen leaves. At the centre of the circle he found it, stood over it; enclosed and secret he stood and felt it throbbing beneath his feet.

Erik took a step back, latched his mind to the sense of it, and pulled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To my wonderful readers from the other, later stories in this 'verse, thank you as always for reading <333 To people I haven't met yet, thank you for reading also, and comments are very much appreciated :)
> 
> Next chapter will be in the next 4 days :D


	2. Chapter 2

_Erik took a step back, latched his mind to the sense of it, and pulled. ___

A tiny, quick response—compressing earth upward, filling miniscule gaps—then a sharp stop. It was a small object but a flat surface, pushing up against a mass of dirt. Erik focused his mind, extended his hand and _pulled_. He could feel the thing straining to break its tomb, but—

He stopped, released his hold, breathed.

He was not going to dig. He would not be made to dig in the dirt. He could do this.

Erik took a deep breath of the crisp, sweet air, took in the silence of the place, the everything he’d never had—felt the stirrings of fury that one soft, satisfied man could possess all of this while he scraped for life in the leavings of the world, that this abundance existed in a world where he had been bled and bruised and broken into adulthood, and that Charles, who had this, who had always had all of this, who wanted for nothing and never had and probably never would could talk of war and peace and speak as though he knew anything of—

With a burst of soil and half-decayed leaf matter the thing erupted from the ground, breaking through into the air like a bullet.

Erik caught it midair, breathless, panting, just higher than his head. He lowered it slowly to eye level; breathed deliberately.

Fury and fury and rage and violence and the need to tear and sunder and break and—

Breathe.

Erik shut his eyes, breathed out and in, out and in, a runner’s breathing, a marathon, out and in, out and in, and focused his attention on the silver coin in his pocket, the watch on his wrist, the house in the distance, the object floating before his face.

He turned his hand palm up, eyes still shut, and floated the thing down to rest there.

He stood, then, still, breathing, silent, for ten seconds, twenty, thirty, counting. The anger simmered, tender and steel, deep seams of silver and bubbling at the surface.

Quiet it. Still it. Make it wait.

He shouldn’t push himself to this sort of anger, he knew—he shouldn’t spur himself to anger that directed the force of his rage at Charles. His rage was for Shaw, and all of it should always run toward that purpose. Heading it at Charles was a waste of energy, and—much as it rankled right now—he knew he’d regret it if Charles felt it when he went back in, not because Charles would ever make him regret it but—he opened his eyes. There were times when it felt as though it would be so satisfying, to see hurt in that wide blue gaze, open and opening, as though it could right wrongs, as though it could make anything, everything easier. That feeling never held once Charles was actually present, if it held up to that point at all.

No, Charles wasn’t the one who deserved his anger. It had served its purpose, though.

Erik opened his hand, and looked at what he’d unearthed.

It was gold, a deep, warm gold—real gold, pure gold, unadulterated. It gleamed in the late afternoon light, plucked every stray sunbeam and curled it around itself. It had warmed quickly, lost the cool of the earth and taken the warmth of his hand. Very little earth clung to it, for something so buried—he had pulled it from the ground at great speed, he supposed, and the air must have shed most of it. He brushed what remained away with his fingers, the surface of the metal clouding slightly in their wake.

It was a coin; not a coin of currency, not even a very old one. Medallion, perhaps, would be a more appropriate term, Erik thought—a golden medallion, not as large as his palm but filling it comfortably, surface smooth and sleek, cast like a coin to be rimmed at the edge, with words and images on the flat.

The side facing up was an unfamiliar image: a coat of arms. The standard shield shape, crossed with what was probably supposed to be an ‘X’, though only the ends of the arms were visible; in the centre, finely detailed sat a castle, stylised and ramparted and then, overlaying that, so that the castle too was visible only in its outer borders, was set an open book, pages blank. The castle crest Erik had seen here and there around the manor: candlesticks, silverware. The ‘X’ and the book must have been a later addition. It was the sort of thing he could almost imagine Charles doing—redesigning an absurd aristocratic emblem to place learning at its centre. That didn’t explain why it was buried at the end of the estate.

Erik turned the medallion over in his hand. On the flip side, raised slightly from the smooth surface, golden letters read:

Charles  
Francis  
Xavier  
Born 3:56am  
23 March, 1933  
7lb, 1oz — 19.98”

Erik read the inscription twice, three times, four, then stared at it blankly for an interminable time. He ran the pad of his thumb across it once. ‘Francis’. Charles had a middle name. Erik didn’t remember having one, but perhaps he had, once? Surely he should remember. He had been old enough. He knew his birth date well enough, a child remembers that, but the time, no, and he had no idea what sort of size he might have been as a newborn—certainly there was no remaining record. No inscription cast in gold. It seemed a bizarre thing, an absurdity, to set out such details in such a way, and more absurd that it existed still—that a solid handful of gold had been left in this form, commemorating the small details of a tiny, fragile thing, and not just left but buried, out of sight and mind, in the back of a sprawling garden, even if it was a distinctive circle of plum trees that marked it.

Had the trees been planted for this purpose alone? It was almost incomprehensible, unfathomable.

Taking one last look around the small circle, Erik closed his fingers over the medallion and slipped it into his pocket. It was getting dark—the sun would still be above the horizon but it was blocked here by foliage. If it got to twilight Charles would worry, and he’d seek out with his mind to find Erik, and Erik would be angry with him, and being angry with Charles was so tiring and frustrating and miserable that he’d wish he’d just come in earlier.

He was aware of the several uncomfortable features of that reasoning: it was conciliatory, it was pathetic, and it was dangerously attached. That he was more attached to Charles than was safe for the man was not a new realisation, though, and the rest he had already decided didn’t bother him. He was still working toward the same point and he was still going to kill Shaw, regardless of Charles’s thoughts on the matter. As long as that remained true, the rest really mattered very little.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the kudos and for reading, even though not much has happened yet XD Comments always appreciated :D <3
> 
> I'll post another chapter of this in the next few days, and then I'll try to get a new chapter of the other fic up in the few days after that :)


	3. Chapter 3

Erik had known Charles almost five days when they set out across the country together.

They’d started out in a CIA car to the train, spent a lot of time in taxi cabs, rented a car once for several weeks. They’d stayed at unnecessarily plush hotels in cities because Charles was a silk stocking of a little princeling, more basic rooms in roadside sprawls with one motel. They’d been on the road a week when Charles asked if he was attracted to men, to which Erik had replied by straight-facedly repeating the question. “Yes,” Charles had offered simply, and hadn’t denied already knowing the answer from Erik’s mind when he asked.

They’d been on the road another week, somewhere nowhere in Texas, when Erik had asked if Charles was attracted to _him_ , and Charles had offered another “Yes.” Erik had told the professor precisely what he thought of him not coming out and _saying so_ when he had the substantial advantage of having read Erik’s thoughts on the matter already. He had then dealt with the situation roughly as he did any situation: directly.

It had been a week and a half on the road, ten days, when they’d started playing chess, an ugly plastic set Charles had bought in a store in a one store town. Charles had sworn not to cheat, and Erik hadn’t believed him, even after the first time he'd beaten Charles. That was the sixth time they’d played, twice the first night, again two days later then three games in an empty roadhouse in nowhere Texas with bad western twang on the radio and terrible coffee and the smell of oil. Erik had won the game and then he’d asked Charles the question, and they’d packed up the chess set and gone back to the motel.

They’d played at least a hundred games since then, most won by Charles, though he distracted easier than Erik did. They played now in Charles’s private study, the fireside table and stuffed brown leather couches, button studded. Charles kept five chess sets in his study, all of them set up. Erik thought it was obscene, but it was also very Charles. Wood, ivory, pewter, marble, glass.

It was ivory by the fire, board set into the low table, two crystal tumblers of brandy, cognac, rich, sharp on the little round side table.

Erik set the medallion on the table ten minutes into the second game of the evening. “I found it in the garden.”

Charles raised an eyebrow, continued scanning the board, glanced up briefly and stopped.

His eyes narrowed as he leaned forward, lips curving to a studied frown.

He straightened slowly. “You found it in the garden.”

Erik pushed the disc an inch across the tabletop toward its owner. “I pulled it from the earth.”

“Yes…” A whisper of a word. Charles reached out slowly to take the medallion between two fingers, held it up so that it caught the firelight. It looked burnished in this proximity to the flames, flickering, sharp.

“3:56am,” he read, barely a murmur. “Nineteen thirty-three. Seven pounds, one ounce, nineteen point nine eight inches.” The slightest laugh, almost surprised. “I was small. On the smaller side of average, at least. And a thoroughly inconvenient time of the morning.”

“And someone thought to set it down in gold.”

“Mmm.” Charles brought the shining thing down to lay in his palm, turned it over, traced fingertips over the crest, outlined the book, drew the mostly-hidden ‘X’. “My birth medallion. I haven’t seen this in…a long time.”

He stood abruptly, closing his hand around Erik’s discovery.

“Why bury it out there?”

Charles rounded the couch briskly, crossed to his desk, cherry polished dark to shine in the firelight. He spoke almost brusquely, for Charles, and didn’t answer the question. “I buried it.”

Erik turned a little to watch his friend over the back of the couch. “Seems a waste.”

A moment’s pause—Charles, lost for words?—before, “Perhaps.”

He was rifling through the second of the high drawers in the desk—he shut it with a quiet sound of frustration. The other two drawers were nestled under the fold-out work surface, which was currently strewn with semi-organised papers: a series of small piles anchored by a series of ornamental paperweights.

Charles stood there still a long moment, back to Erik, breathing a little fast for a quiet evening of chess. Then he shifted the medallion away from the edge of the desk and left it, coming back to the fireside.

Erik watched him come, waited until he sat. “You’re distressed.”

Charles shook his head distractedly, pressed two fingers to his temple. “Sorry, I’m—”

“You’re not projecting.” Erik waited for Charles to look back to him. “I’m not blind.”

Charles stared a moment, blank, almost confused—and then dropped his hand back to his lap, shifted his gaze back to the chess board, to the fireplace behind it. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. What’s distressing about it?”

“Hm?”

“You buried your ‘birth medallion’ at the other end of the estate, presumably because it causes you such distress. Why?”

Charles’s eyes came back to him briefly, a flicker of a look, then settled firmly on the fire. “I didn’t—that’s not. That’s not why I buried it. It’s nothing to worry about, Erik. Truly.”

“Why, then?”

“It’s—” Charles shook his head again, claimed his glass from the side table and took a deep sip. He placed it down again carefully. “An old tradition. That’s all.”

Erik stared. Charles didn’t look at him. “Are you trying to lie to me?”

“One lies or one does not. We lie every day. We are not so innocent as to have to ‘try’.”

It was more honesty than Charles usually allowed himself to speak. Erik considered another moment, then picked both kings from the chess board and placed them with the glasses.

“Erik—”

“And now you’re trying to avert the conversation.”

“I’m not, my friend. You need not suspect me.”

“Don’t lie to me.” Charles was a manipulative bastard and Erik had half a mind to make him admit it, but this first. No secrets.

“It doesn’t matter, Erik. I swear, it’s nothing.”

“Then tell me.”

“Don’t be childish.”

Erik stood, slipped between the couch and the side table rather than going around Charles, and headed calmly across the room.

“Erik—”

Erik turned in front of the desk, the clutter of paper piles behind him. Charles was standing again, half-way around the couch. Erik stared him down. “You know everything about me.”

“Not everything. I was exaggerating a little.”

“What could be so important that I not know?”

“It’s not—it’s nothing like that, Erik. Please.”

Charles was never flustered. Erik pressed it. “Let’s see.” Cynical, not cold but hard. “Your parents were Nazis and it’s pressed from Jewish gold.”

Despite the bitterness in the words it wasn’t a serious thought, and Charles’s irritation made clear that he knew that. “Erik…”

Erik couldn’t think when Charles had ever addressed him with anything so close to disgust.

He pressed down the hot, gut response to that—fight, cold fury, take down and take out. Charles did not respond to anger, and they’d only end up both fuming in adjoining but separate bedrooms.

He focused instead on the lines of Charles’s face, creases made deep by flickering shadows, carved in by tension. Erik chose quiet, measured. Strategic. “No secrets, Charles. Didn’t we agree?”

“This isn’t a relevant secret.”

“Personal, then. Can you be sure it doesn’t shape your power as my secrets shape mine?”

“It’s not something you need to know.” He looked up, then, made eye contact with a tightness, a forcing of will that Erik hadn’t seen before. “It’s not something I want you to know.”

It was said strongly enough to be true, it was confident, clear, but—“You’re a terrible liar.”

“I am not.”

“You can lie about being a telepath because no one expects it to be true. You’re hopeless at anything else.”

It was a small shift of topic, but the release of tension in Charles’s body was almost palpable. He moved wordlessly to the side table, reached around a small lamp to retrieve both of their glasses. He crossed to the wooden trolley against the other wall, unstoppered the decanter containing the cognac and refilled both of their drinks before speaking. “It’s a family matter, from a long time ago. You have your own concerns, Erik; I don’t need to drag out mine.”

“Concerns.”

Charles flinched minutely. “A poor choice of word, perhaps—”

“Don’t try to coddle me. Concerns, then. What sorts of concerns made you bury the medal?”

Charles extended the hand with Erik’s glass. Erik came slowly, eyes never leaving his target’s. Charles sighed quietly as he handed the drink over. “If I tell you, will you leave it alone?”

“If you like.”

“Promise me.”

“Fine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey lovely people! Thanks for reading :) Hope you're enjoying this story! I'm 17 days out from submitting my thesis, so I'm a bit short on time to write the other fic right now :P This one's already written, though, so I'm going to keep posting this and try to have another chapter written by the time that's done ;)
> 
> Anyhow, hope you enjoyed the chapter, comments always very much appreciated <3 (Many thanks to Etirabys, Shaliara and AbandonedWorld for comments last chapter, and to kongjingying, Lexie, draco22 and Kyrene for recent comments on the other fic! <333333)


	4. Chapter 4

_Charles sighed quietly as he handed the drink over. “If I tell you, will you leave it alone?”_

 _“If you like.”_

 _“Promise me.”_

 _“Fine.”_

Charles looked almost surprised, then trapped, then looked down at his brandy. He swirled it once in his glass, though more than half full that brought it close to spilling. “I buried it because I was concerned that my step-father would sell it. It has sentimental value beyond its monetary worth.”

“Step-father?”

“Erik…”

“I lied.”

Charles glared, and for a moment, just a moment, he was so childish, and so not, and so intensely himself in all the most impossible, irrational ways, and Erik was utterly distracted.

It was probably that, ironically—whatever softening it brought in Erik’s eyes, whatever still unfamiliar warmth it thrust between them—that made Charles answer.

He looked down again at his drink, spoke quietly and calmly. “My father died in an industrial accident in New Mexico. Experimental physics comes with risks. My mother married one of his colleagues. He was only ever here for the money, and he used to–complain, about how much of it was tied up in the estate. He hated having reminders of my father in the house, he sold a lot of…” Charles shook his head, looked up. “So I buried it. I was a child. It probably seemed the logical thing to do at the time.”

“And the plum trees?”

A thin smile, almost wistful. “My mother planted them, I’m not sure when. She wanted to be buried in the circle. She wasn’t, in the end; she’s in the family plot with my father. Far more sensible, probably.”

Erik nodded slowly. “Your stepfather…”

“Was a flawed man, as men are.”

“I see.” Erik’s face made plain that it wasn’t an acceptance.

Charles shifted uncomfortably, took half a step back to lean awkwardly on the trolley with one hand. “That’s the story, my friend. There’s nothing—”

“Don’t lie.” The warning was unmistakable.

Charles held his gaze, but he looked—tired.

Erik held his ground. “Why were you afraid of your family?”

“Not my...” Charles pushed an awkward hand into his fringe, massaged his temple with two fingers, flinched when Erik tensed defensively at the motion. “I wouldn’t.” Hurt.

“I know.”

A quiet sigh. “Yet trust cannot be forced, and so you react before knowledge intervenes.” Charles looked sideways toward the fire a long moment of stillness, dead chunks of wood slowly falling apart. “Is it truly important to you, that I tell you?”

Erik almost, almost felt guilty. “Yes.”

Charles drew a sharp breath in, released it slowly. He stared into the flames another timeless waiting. Erik could almost see his mind working behind his eyes.

When he spoke, his voice was certain. “Alright.” He stood up straight again, looked past Erik’s shoulder. “My stepfather was a cruel man, who could have saved my father and instead left him to die. He had no love for my mother, treated her poorly, drove her to alcohol. They each spent more time drinking alone than doing anything with another person. His son didn’t have his father’s intelligence like I had mine, and he resented that. He preferred me over his own son, when he preferred anyone or anything, and he beat Cain very harshly. Cain did the same to me in turn. I was just awakening to my powers at the time, I had been since—maybe a year before my father’s death—and I—I was a child. I wanted to help my mother and didn’t know how so I rode in her mind, for hours, tried to drain off her pain into my own body. I experienced a lot of the beatings he inflicted upon my half-brother second-hand, without intending to—I had very poor control, no control, really—and I went into his mind once, foolishly, Cain’s mind, and…”

The tumbling rush of his words ceased, teeth sinking into his bottom lip, a breath in. His eyes were distant, off in the dark corner of the room, bookcases and brocade-upholstered chairs and no one to see. Erik waited.

“I suspect that the pain I experienced through my telepathy did more harm in the long run than the physical beatings, though I thought he’d kill me at the time and he probably intended to at least once. In the end…my mother died, alcohol, heartbreak. Things were much worse, for a while…he was angry, and he took it out on both of us but particularly Cain, and Cain took it out on me…I was hiding Raven then, too, she was so young—she came to me shortly before my mother died…there was a place, it’s still there, a corridor on the second floor that was walled in when I was a very young child. I used to hide there when he most violent, and I hid Raven there, initially, put furniture in there and brought her things, but I…I was afraid of leading him to her, so I didn’t—it was much harder, without a hiding place. Worth it, of course, absolutely worth it but…and then—there was an accident. A fire. In the lab downstairs, where I have Hank working. He—Kurt, my stepfather—dragged us both out, but he died shortly after." Charles swallowed awkwardly, eyes scanning something that wasn't there—scanning memories, Erik thought. Making sure he'd told it all. He nodded twice, then again. "The room’s fireproof, thankfully." An afterthought. "I would never have…if anything had happened to Raven…well. It didn’t.”

Erik waited a count of ten, then a count of twenty while Charles watched the far wall. Then he took a mouthful of brandy, as much to remind Charles that he was there as anything. “The boy is also dead?”

Charles blinked, clearly not expecting the question, though it might have been just the slip back to conversation, to the present. “No, no he—Cain was close to my age.”

“But he’s not here,” Erik prompted.

“Oh,” Charles quirked a sheepish attempt at a smile, failed utterly, managed a sort of grimace, then, “No, he…when my mother died, the estate passed to me. I was still underage then, I couldn’t inherit until sixteen, but by the time Kurt died…well, it was my house. I had no wish to treat Cain with cruelty but—his father had driven my mother to her death, there would have been no one…and Cain—wanted to kill me, really—and I had Raven to care for, to hide from him…”

“You sent him away.”

“Mm.”

Erik searched for some degree of sensitivity. It was not something at which he was well-practiced. “You do realise, Charles…you don’t have to justify that. I would have killed him. No one would blame you if you had.”

Charles pressed his eyes shut, a prayer of blindness, as though that could hold out that truth. “No.”

Erik resisted a sigh.

Slowly, Charles relaxed again. “No. I…one death does not remedy another.”

 _But it might help_ , Erik didn’t say, and refused to think of his own mother lifeless and lifeless and lifeless and gone. He followed Charles’s gaze back to the medallion on the desk. It gleamed in the warm light of the room, plush and full of lies. “He’s still out there, then.”

Charles nodded, eyes still distant.

“Do you fear him?”

A dry chuckle. “No. No, my friend. I fear no one, now.” A lop-sided smile as he met Erik’s gaze. “Neither of us need fear anyone now.”

Erik held the gaze, but didn’t smile back. “Perhaps.”

After a moment Charles looked away, eyes straying back to the desktop.

“It doesn’t bother you, coming back here?”

Charles was, absurdly, surprised, eyebrows arching comically. “To Westchester? I lived here with Raven for years, and it would be ludicrous to throw away the estate for…” he shook his head dismissively, though the lightness didn’t extend to the tension in his stance and in the lines of his face. “It wasn’t an ideal way to grow up, certainly, but it’s not…” he half raised his free hand, an empty gesture, searching for words. “My—challenges—were not even comparable to—what you…”

Erik mercifully cut him off. “True enough.”

Charles nodded an end to the conversation. “Exactly.” A weak smile. “You shouldn’t even think about it. It’s nothing, my friend. Truly.”

 _You don’t dictate what I think about, Charles_. The thought was sharp but the knowledge was deep in him, almost comforting. Erik ran his tongue slowly along the sharp edge of his teeth, turned Charles's words over in his mind before speaking. “Compared to—the wrongs done to my family, to my people—it is nothing. That does not make it nothing at all. There is a difference.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of my thanks and love to furius, Kyrene and heron61 for comments last chapter! Replies the second this is posted XD
> 
> One chapter left on this one! Shall post in the next few days :) All reads, kudos and comments are vastly appreciated <3


	5. Chapter 5

_Erik ran his tongue slowly along the sharp edge of his teeth, turned Charles's words over in his mind before speaking. “Compared to—the wrongs done to my family, to my people—it is nothing. That does not make it nothing at all. There is a difference.”_

For a long moment, Charles just stared, eyes wide, expression unfamiliar. Then, quiet, reflective but oh so sincere, he murmured, “You are so wise, when you allow yourself to be.”

Erik raised an eyebrow.

Charles smiled a quiet breath of laughter. “We may not agree on much, my friend, but there is a generosity of spirit in you that is admirable, even if you refuse to see it.”

Erik mirrored the half-laughter, though his had more cynicism than joy. “We shall continue to disagree, then.”

“I suppose so.” He was smiling, though, smiling again.

Erik took half a step closer, half willing himself to drop the whole topic and not at all surprised when he didn’t. “You have no scars.”

The smile tightened immediately, falling from Charles’s eyes. It proved the professor wrong, Erik reflected, that it didn’t make him wish he hadn’t asked.

Charles pushed a self-conscious hand again into the front of his hair. “My mother didn’t know. She was distant and oblivious but not cruel as such. And Kurt…the few times he found out, caught us, he beat Cain terribly. My brother was careful.”

Erik shuddered involuntarily, invisibly— _careful not to kill, careful not to permanently maim, careful not to ruin the work in progress, ‘careful not to hurt my precious child’_ , and sixteen years old wondering what meaning of hurt could possibly be left to be avoided.

Before him, Charles was watching the corner again, staring over Erik’s shoulder. Erik wondered but knew he wouldn’t ask whether Charles too remembered a litany of self-righteous lies, whether his ‘brother’ had tried to justify his actions.

Instead he took another step forward to replace Charles’s hand with his own, pushing the strands Charles had disturbed back from his brow and then running fingertips back carefully, not searching but slow, over his skull.

Charles watched Erik’s arm instead of his face. “Yes. There. And the soles of my feet. Sometimes high on my thighs. He broke my leg once. We told my mother I’d fallen down the stairs. I’m probably lucky he didn’t damage my brain.”

Erik had to smile at that, just a little, a morbid turning of the corners of lips—only Charles could be so completely certain that his brain was in perfect peak condition.

For a while then they stood quietly, Erik’s fingers in the loose tangle of Charles’s hair, Charles inclining his head slightly into the touch.

After a minute, Charles’s hand came up to touch too, to run fingertips down chest stomach hip, and Erik sighed as he caught the wrist, ran his thumbnail across soft white palm. He should let it lie. He couldn’t. “How can you not have learned to fear? You don’t make sense.”

Charles stood docile, palm open, head leaning into Erik’s broad hand, endlessly, endlessly trusting, and smiled wryly. “It’s not that I don’t fear, my friend. I do, for those less able than us. And yet violence only begets more violence.”

Erik scoffed despite himself. “Man begets violence. He needs no impetus.”

Charles didn’t reply at once—he swallowed, the movement visible in his throat, shifted his hand a little in Erik’s to stroke the pad of his own thumb over the pulse point in Erik’s wrist. When he did speak, the words were slow, measured. “I never hated Cain…because I felt all the reasons that he hurt me. He hurt me because his father hurt him, had hurt him all his life. His father hurt him because he had been hurt himself. That is what I knew, Erik; that is what it meant to be this, then, to have this ability. Someone has to choose to break that cycle.”

“You should have stopped them.”

Charles shrugged minutely. “Perhaps. I don’t think I had that power yet. I was still very weak. Regardless…I promised myself—I was only a child, but I promised myself that I would never become…that I would never hurt another for my pain as my brother and my stepfather did me.”

He held up a quieting hand, met Erik’s eyes before he could speak. “I know it’s not that simple. It’s a child’s logic—I was a child—but I still believe…” He shook his head, lip caught between his teeth, eyes earnest. “Violence is an evil.” He looked down again, to their joined hands. “Perhaps it is this.” He raised two fingers indicatively to his temple. “When one knows a man as he is in his own mind, it is difficult to sustain hatred.”

Erik waited a moment, let Charles be done. His answer hadn’t changed. “So Shaw killed the taxi driver boy because someone hurt him?”

Charles sighed. It made Erik bristle just a little.

“Hurt made him shoot my mother?”

“I don’t know, Erik.”

“Do you believe it would change anything if you did?”

Charles shrugged. “I haven’t been in the man’s mind, Erik, I haven’t met him, I don’t know. I imagine he’s probably mad.”

“Ahhhh.” An icy smile twisted Erik’s lips, though his hand in Charles’s hair stayed carefully gentle. “Madness. Of course.”

“It’s not an excuse—”

“No.”

“I’m not defending him, Erik.”

“But you will defend the men who beat you and your mother.”

“It’s a different—”

“So we established.”

Another moment of Charles’s face all solemn hope and the edges of disappointment—then he bowed his head, not pulling away from Erik’s hand but from his eyes. “I’m tired.” Not angry or bitter, just—tired. “Tomorrow, Erik? Please.”

It was the first time either of them had stepped back from the argument.

Despite himself, Erik felt hope welling, helpless, impossible to sever.

Charles would see reason. He would come around. He had to.

Erik made a quiet sound that Charles could take as he liked, anything but surrender, and shifted the half step in to draw Charles against his body, to rest Charles’s head atop his shoulder. He came easily, more than willingly, pliable, as always, and the touch of his fingers wandering over ribs down to Erik’s waist was soft but the touch back up his spine was strong, hands pressing back up to hold and to keep. Charles _was_ strong, terribly, wonderfully strong, despite all his weakness.

For an interminable time they stood in silence, firelight on warm wood, Charles’s unnecessarily fine cardigan soft beneath Erik’s fingers, the slow sound of logs burning. They shifted slightly with the weight of each other, minutely, the way one sways just slightly when trying to stand perfectly still.

It might have been a minute or ten when Charles smoothed the ball of his hand down Erik’s back, fingertips trailing behind like an absent thought. “Don’t tell the children?”

Erik laughed and made no attempt to stop it, though it withered in a few breaths regardless. “Charles…”

“I know. Just—checking.”

They lapsed into silence again, Charles pressing firm circles into the small of Erik’s back with three fingers, Erik tracing one hand idly in and out of the back waistband of Charles’s trousers.

“Thank you,” Charles murmured eventually, words half-muffled in Erik’s neck.

Erik smiled, just a little—quiet, but good, good like everything that was Charles.

“We’re not alone, remember?” he answered, quiet and simple and true, only a touch of irony, as though he believed that Charles ever forgot anything. Still.

Charles’s hands pressed tighter, and Erik held him steady.

“We’re not alone,” Charles repeated, certain. “Not now. Not ever again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end of this one :) Thank you so much for reading! <3 The new chapter of the later fic is now up, so if you enjoyed this, please take a look at the other stories in the 'verse :)
> 
> All of my thanks to kongjingying and Kyrene for comments, you guys are awesome; and to everyone who left kudos; and to everyone who took the time to read :D <3


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